SANAA, 8 June 2004 — The defense team representing 14 suspects charged with terror acts in Yemen withdrew from the case yesterday, saying the defendants are being denied a fair trial.
Four senior lawyers pulled out of the case after the chief judge of a Sanaa anti-terrorism court barred them from getting copies of the cases records. “We announce our withdrawal from this case in relief to our consciences and respect to our moral and professional duty,” the four lawyers said in a statement.
“We found ourselves standing before a state security court that lacks the least guarantees for a fair trial,” the statement added.
“Seeing that the minimum level of justice was not provided... we announce our withdrawal from this case out of respect for our duty,” they said. The trial was postponed to June 12 and unless the lawyers return a new defense team must be appointed either by the court or the defendants.
The lawyers claimed their presence was only a formal procedure aiming at giving legitimacy to a false trial. The trial began on May 29 with four of the defendants accused of planning and carrying out an attack in October 2002 on the French oil supertanker Limburg off the southeastern Yemeni coast. A fifth suspect in the attack is being tried in absentia.
According to the prosecution, the five bought a small boat and loaded it with more than 1,200 kilograms of TNT and 20 kilograms of C-4 explosives. The boat attacked the tanker as it entered the Al-Dhabba oil exporting harbor on the Arabian Sea. One Bulgarian crew member was killed. The prosecution said two suicide attackers rammed the boat into the tanker.
Ten of the defendants were charged with attacking a helicopter belonging to the US company Hunt Oil after take-off from Sanaa International Airport in March 2003. The fourteen suspects are also accused of carrying out bombings near Political Security Organization (intelligence) buildings and the homes of three top intelligence officials in 2003. No one was hurt in the attacks.
Nine of the defendants are also charged with planning suicide bomb attacks on the embassies of the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Cuba, and plotting to assassinate US Ambassador Edmund J. Hull. The attacks never happened.
Muhammad Naji Allaw, head of the defense team, said the court was giving contradicting decisions by retracting from a previous decision to allow the defense lawyers to copy all transcripts of the case.
